Sunday, 18 September 2011

Save the Children: End the Health Care Worker Crisis

If Blondie Boy gets ill it's a ten minute drive to his doctor; if its closed we phone up NHS24 for advice or go to out of hours clinic. All his health care is free including prescriptions. I don't have to weigh cost or time of his treatment against how ill he is. African mothers do. Half of the 8 million children who die each year are in Africa, yet Africa has only 3% of the world’s doctors, nurses and midwives. You don't have to be a math genius to look at that statistic and know what needs to happen.

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Save the Children need your help and I'm not asking you for anything other than your name. Please take action and sign this petition urging the Prime Minister to help solve the global health care worker shortage by urging him to:

1) Attend a high level event during the UN General Assembly where the UK and other governments make commitments to fund, train, deploy and support more health workers.2) Commit new and additional support to help key countries strengthen their health workforce.3) By the end of the year, articulate how the government will support countries to deliver on the UN Global Strategy on Women’s and Children’s Health.

If you want to write your own 100-word post and link it up then that would be pretty kick ass, too. Just get the word out and help to reach that 60,000 signature target before Tuesday 20th September when the lovely Christine Mosler, who went to Mozambique to follow the journey of a life-saving vaccine and Liz Scarff will be making noise on behalf of Save the Children at the UN Summit in New York.

If you are American and want to do something you can visit Save The Children USA's action center where you can become an advocate and write your member of Congress.

That's not too much to ask to help save a child's life is it?

Thank you to the lovely women at NetMums for sponsoring me to attend the conference.